Citizenship USA Spouse(s) Shirley Ecker Alma mater Harvard Law School | Occupation Attorney Relatives Betty Jane Boskey Home town New York City | |
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Born August 14, 1916 ( 1916-08-14 ) New York, NY Known for Clerk for Judge Learned Hand Parent(s) Meyer Boskey, Janet Lauterstein Died 11 May 2016, Bethesda, Maryland, United States | ||
Bennett boskey 2006 on chief justice harlan stone
Bennett Boskey (August 14, 1916 – May 11, 2016) was an American lawyer who clerked for Judge Learned Hand and for two U.S. Supreme Court justices, Stanley Reed and Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone. He helped to craft the standing doctrine in Ex parte Quirin which enabled the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case against German military saboteurs, which has had legal implications during the War on Terror in the first two decades of the 21st Century.
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Bennett boskey 2006 on ex parte quirin
Early life and education
Bennett Boskey was born in New York City and grew up on Central Park West in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the son of Janet Lauterstein (July 12, 1890 – May 26, 1983), and a prosperous lawyer, Meyer Boskey (July 24, 1883 – February 10, 1969). Bennett's younger sister, Betty Jane Boskey (November 9, 1918 – December 28, 1984), married Lloyd Stanley Snedeker (May 27, 1916 – December 14, 1977) and lived in Great Neck, Long Island, New York.
He was raised in a household committed to equality. In 1899, his father co-founded the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity at New York's City College. The fraternity admitted Christians and Jews at a time when others refused to mix religions. In 1914, two years before Bennett's birth, Meyer Boskey withdrew as National Secretary of the fraternity when it limited its membership to white Christians.
In 1916, Meyer Boskey advertised his legal services in the firm of Brown & Boskey as "general practice in all courts." His son, Bennett, would later describe his law practice in the same way.
After arriving at Williams College at age 15, Boskey was graduated in 1935 and then studied economics for a year at the University of Chicago at the height of the Great Depression. In 1939, he graduated from Harvard Law School, where he came to the attention of then Professor Felix Frankfurter and was a member of the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review.
In 1940, Bennett Boskey married Shirley Ecker (January 15, 1918 – October 13, 1998), who also had grown up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College, then attended Columbia Law School, and received her law degree from George Washington University. She was the daughter of two successful real estate attorneys, Judge Samuel Ecker (August 21, 1882 – March 30, 1970) and Frances Schuman (January 14, 1891 – July 16, 1979), and shared her husband's childhood immersion in law. In Washington, D.C., Shirley Boskey worked at the World Bank, rising to become its first female head of department as Director of the International Relations Department, where "she was responsible for managing the...relationship with other intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations." The Shirley Ecker Boskey Chair in International Studies at Vassar is endowed in her memory.
Judicial clerkships
Bennett Boskey was a law clerk for a year (1939-1940) for Judge Learned Hand of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. As the story goes, "Hand accepted Boskey sight unseen after Felix Frankfurter...recommended the student."
In 1940, Boskey came to Washington, where he clerked at the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Stanley Reed from 1940 to 1941, and Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone from 1941 to 1943.
In October 1941, Justice Robert H. Jackson joined the Court, an event Boskey recalled fondly in a 2005 essay.
Ex parte Quirin: Saboteurs Case Standing Doctrine
During Boskey's clerkship for Chief Justice Stone, the Court decided Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), a case that upheld the jurisdiction of a United States military tribunal during WW II over the trial of eight German saboteurs in the United States. Quirin has been cited as a precedent for the trial by military commission of any unlawful combatant against the United States.
Boskey played a pivotal role in shaping the case's reasoning. "Writing to Boskey about the Fifth and Sixth Amendments challenge..., Stone admitted that 'I think [my statement in the draft opinion] is right but my authorities are meager.'" With a creative flair, Boskey proposed to Stone the so-called "satisfactory alternative method" to give the Court the standing to review the Saboteurs Case.
Legal career
After Army service in World War II, where Boskey achieved the rank of first lieutenant, he worked for several federal agencies. Boskey was special assistant to the Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice in 1943, and an adviser on enemy property in the U.S. Department of State from 1946 to 1947, in an office led by economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Boskey was an attorney for the Atomic Energy Commission ("AEC") from 1947 to 1949; he served as deputy general counsel for the AEC from 1949 to 1951, where he worked under agency counsel, Joseph Volpe, Jr. (October 18, 1913 – January 26, 2002).
From 1951 to 1996, Boskey was a partner in the firm that became Volpe, Boskey and Lyons. During WW II, Volpe had assisted Gen. Leslie Groves (August 17, 1896 – July 13, 1970) in negotiations to "secure uranium and other material from Great Britain." In 1954, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) asked Volpe to represent him against charges of treason. The U.S. Government had bugged Volpe's law office and secretly recorded the conversations.
At the firm, Boskey represented non-profit organizations, individuals in probate cases, and companies in matters of nuclear energy licensing. On December 12, 1961, Boskey argued Coppedge v. United States before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning a 5-2 majority for his in forma pauperis client appealing a criminal conviction. In 1973, Boskey helped Columbia University defend its license to operate a nuclear reactor on campus for research purposes, though it was never used. When the firm dissolved in 1996, Boskey maintained a solo practice for an additional nineteen years.
Following the model set by Judge Hand, Boskey devoted substantial effort to law reform. Judge Hand was an early member of the American Law Institute ("ALI"), and had chaired the committee that established ALI's method of involving a mix of private practitioners, law professors and judges to publish recommendations. As with Hand, Boskey believed law should adapt to changes in society. The ALI's recommended reforms and publishing Restatements of law furthered that goal. From 1975 to 2010, Boskey was treasurer of ALI. Since at least 1971, his so-called "Boskey motion", precisely capturing a draft’s procedural status, has preceded its approval at the ALI Annual Meeting.
In 1975, during the administration of President Gerald Ford, Boskey was on the short list of possible nominations to the Supreme Court.
The position of the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School is held by Lani Guinier.
Boskey was a member of the New York bar for more than seventy-five years (making him among the top five longest tenured members), and the Washington, D.C., bar for sixty-seven.